Fashion

The Coolest Arab Jewelry Brands You Should Know

BYKhaoula Ghanem

September 15, 2026

Beyond the gold souks, family heirlooms, and name necklaces we know and love, designers across the region are having much more fun with what jewelry from this part of the world can look like. Think frankincense cast into rings, Arabic letters twisted into diamonds, Libyan fishbone talismans, Emirati pearl-diving references, and ancient Egyptian symbols given a completely new life. Some of the names ahead have been around for decades, others are barely getting started, but all of them deserve space in your jewelry box.

halfhour

halfhour started with the kind of problem jewelry people know well: Dana Shishan wanted a very specific pinky ring and couldn’t find it, so she designed it herself. A video call with her friend, Saudi entrepreneur Ghada AlHedeithy, turned that sketch into a business idea, and eventually the Dubai-based fine jewelry label halfhour. That first ring became the Duo, its now-signature design formed from two intertwined hexagonal bands. Today, the Jordanian-Saudi duo works in 18K gold and lab-grown diamonds, building collections around geometric forms, contrasting textures and pieces made for serious stacking. Everything is made to order, while the designs are intentionally gender-fluid and easy to mix however you please. Basically, if you subscribe to the belief that one ring is never enough, halfhour gets it.

Alia Bin Omair

Born and raised in Dubai, the Emirati designer studied jewelry design and production at Damas Jewellery Academy in 2013, winning Emirati Jewellery Designer of the Year that same year before launching her namesake label in 2016. Her references are distinctly local, but rarely obvious. Her inaugural Tears collection experimented with frankincense, casting the resin known as the “tears” of the tree into sculptural jewelry, while Leaf turned UAE palm leaves into gold-cast pieces. Satami revisited the traditional Emirati coin necklace, and Touminah drew from the celebration historically held for children who completed memorization of the Quran. That approach earned Bin Omair the Fashion Trust Arabia Prize for jewelry in 2021. Today, her pieces are still made and sourced in the UAE, making her label a particularly good place to start if you like your jewelry with a story behind it.

Azza Fahmy

Azza Fahmy was doing Arab jewelry before Arab jewelry became a global fashion talking point. Her story dates back to 1969, when the Egyptian designer discovered a book on medieval European jewelry and became obsessed with learning the craft herself. She headed to Cairo’s centuries-old Khan El Khalili, becoming one of the first women to apprentice alongside its traditionally male goldsmiths, before later studying jewelry design and manufacturing in London.

More than five decades later, her namesake house has become instantly recognizable for chunky silver, gold, gemstones, and Arabic calligraphy, with references spanning Ancient Egypt, Nubian architecture, Mamluk design, poetry, and the music of Umm Kulthum. Now working alongside daughters Fatma and Amina Ghali, Fahmy has helped take Egyptian jewelry craftsmanship from the workshops of Khan El Khalili to an international audience, while making a very convincing argument for wearing your history around your neck.

Bil Arabi

Before Arabic calligraphy became a jewelry-world mainstay, Nadine Kanso was already putting it front and center. The Lebanese artist, photographer, and designer launched Bil Arabi in Dubai in 2006, partly out of a desire to reclaim Arab identity at a time when, in the years following 9/11, she felt Arabic language and culture had acquired increasingly negative associations abroad. That same year, her photography appeared in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Arabize Me exhibition, exploring many of the same questions around contemporary Arab identity.

Her first piece was the now-iconic Noon ring, an 18-karat gold interpretation of the Arabic letter ن. One letter soon became an alphabet, then names, words and phrases, establishing the oversized Arabic typography that still makes Bil Arabi instantly recognizable. Nearly two decades later, every piece is still manufactured in Dubai, while Kanso has taken her distinctive lettering well beyond jewelry through collaborations with names including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Guerlain, and Berluti.

FYR Jewelry

Franco-Egyptian designer Farah Y. Radwan founded the label in 2017 after studying luxury product design in Paris and training in jewelry-making at Azza Fahmy’s Design Studio in Cairo. Growing up between Paris and Cairo, alongside an early fascination with her grandmother’s jewelry box, shaped her approach to pieces that feel more like future heirlooms than passing accessories. Designed and prototyped in Paris before being handcrafted by Egyptian artisans in Cairo, FYR takes cues from Ancient Egypt, contemporary Egyptian culture, the Sinai, and even the country’s feminist history, translating them into chunky silver, sculptural rings, natural stones, and deliberately gender-fluid forms. Radwan’s approach earned her the Jewelry Prize at Fashion Trust Arabia in 2025.

Kamushki

You might know the evil eye, but Kamushki would like to introduce you to another protective symbol. Libyan sisters Mariam and Dania Sawedeg launched the fine jewelry label in Dubai in 2014, bringing together their Libyan heritage and a childhood spent between Zurich, Dubai, and Tripoli. Their love of jewelry came early, particularly through trips to gold souks with their mother, before Mariam went on to study jewelry design at GIA in London.

Kamushki’s signature soon became the fishbone, inspired by the fish motif traditionally associated in Libyan culture with protection from the evil eye, good fortune, and happiness. Their debut Wishbone collection gave that symbol a contemporary fine-jewelry spin, setting the tone for a label that has since played with protective verses, talismans, and symbols drawn from the sisters’ cultural references. Even the name tells another part of their story: “Kamushki” comes from the Russian word for stones, a nod to the different cultures the Swiss-raised sisters encountered growing up. Basically, consider it your very chic insurance against bad energy.

L’Atelier Nawbar

L’Atelier Nawbar has more than a century of jewelry history behind it. The Lebanese family’s story dates to 1891 in Beirut’s gold souk, with sisters Dima and Tania Nawbar eventually becoming the fourth generation, and the first women, to take the reins. When they returned to the family business around 2010, they had little interest in making fine jewelry that spent most of its life inside a safe. Instead, they introduced color, enamel, carved stones, and pieces designed to be stacked, mixed, and actually worn.

The jewelry is still handmade in Lebanon using traditional techniques, but the results can be wonderfully playful: evil eyes, suns, pomegranates, hearts, and celestial motifs appear alongside diamonds, colorful enamel, and precious stones. The sisters have since taken the family name from Beirut to retailers including Harrods and Net-a-Porter, proving that 130-plus years in the business does not mean your jewelry has to look its age.

Tamarzizt

Born and raised in the Tunisian capital, Tunisian designer Oumaima Tamarzizt studied design before moving to Paris for jewelry training in 2007, eventually launching her namesake brand in 2014 after working as a freelance designer for several luxury houses. Her jewelry follows the same geographical back-and-forth. Amazigh motifs and North African geometry meet the cleaner lines of French jewelry, with architecture, contemporary art, and her travels through India providing further reference points. Collections range from Handassa, named after the Arabic word for architecture, to Afrodisiaque, which riffs on African masks through oversized forms, stones, and gold-toned metal. The pieces are handmade in small workshops in Paris and Tunis, which feels fitting for a label that has spent more than a decade making those two cities speak the same jewelry language.

Noor Fares

Noor Fares makes jewelry for people who like their diamonds with a little metaphysics attached. The Lebanese designer launched her namesake label in 2009 after graduating from Central Saint Martins and earning a GIA certification, developing a visual language built around geometry, spirituality, and the idea of jewelry as a modern-day talisman. Her pieces pull from an unusually wide reference library, moving between the geometric patterns of Middle Eastern architecture, Hindu mandalas, Buddhist philosophy, chakras, and mathematical forms. Hand-carved crystals, optical illusions and bold geometric silhouettes have since become signatures, earning Fares a COUTURE Design Award in 2019. Think sacred geometry, but make it fine jewelry.

Shamsa Alabbar

Shamsa Alabbar started designing jewelry almost by accident. In 2013, the Emirati graphic designer created a birthday present for her best friend Alia, abstracting her name into geometric Arabic lettering and turning it into a pendant. After posting the piece on Instagram, requests started coming in, and an experiment soon became her namesake fine jewelry label.

That graphic-design training still gives Alabbar’s work its edge. Arabic letters are cropped, stretched, and reduced into lines and geometric forms that can look almost abstract until you realize what you are reading. Early collections established that language in gold and diamonds, while later designs have continued playing with Kufic-inspired forms, typography, and Emirati references. More than a decade later, Alabbar has become one of the defining names in the UAE’s contemporary fine jewelry scene, proving the Arabic alphabet looks pretty good in diamonds, too.

Nuun Jewels

Founder Princess Nourah Al Faisal spent around 15 years designing private commissions before officially launching Nuun in Paris in 2014, following studies in interior design and an apprenticeship with craftsmen in Place Vendôme. The name itself is personal: “Nu” is Al Faisal’s nickname, while nuun is the Arabic pronunciation of the letter N.

Saudi references regularly find their way into the jewelry without becoming overly literal. Her signature Banajir bangles reinterpret bracelets traditionally worn by women across the Arabian Peninsula, with geometric details recalling the decoration found around old Saudi doorways. Elsewhere, Riyadh’s architecture, desert colors, and landscapes meet gemstones and the techniques of Parisian high jewelry workshops. The result feels like a conversation between Riyadh and Place Vendôme, conducted in diamonds.

The Coolest Arab Jewelry Brands You Should Know

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